‘Wolf Of Wall Street’ Producer Charged With Money Laundering

Image Credit: Variety/Paramount

The Wolf of Wall Street has produced a sequel that you probably weren’t expecting.

Red Granite Pictures, the producer of the hit movie, is allegedly embroiled in a Malaysian corruption scandal that reads like a scene straight out of the film.

Reza Aziz, who ran Red Granite Pictures, has been charged with embezzling millions of dollars from the Malaysian government. The producer faces five charges of money laundering stemming from accusations that he received $248 million from Malaysian state fund 1MDB. Aziz, who is the stepson of former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, is now the third member of the former first family to face charges related to misappropriated funds from 1MDB. Najib, for his part, is facing 42 corruption charges and is currently on trial for a few of them.

The 1MDB scandal is the largest corruption scandal in Malaysian history. The scandal has involved billions of dollars being embezzled from Malaysian state funding and being spent fraudulently around the world. Approximately $681 million in 1MDB funds somehow found their way into Razak’s bank accounts, where the funds were allegedly used on lavish expenses. The US Justice Department has come out saying that the amount of money stolen overall is probably over $4.5 billion. Aziz has been accused of transferring his share of the money to a Swiss bank account, after which he allegedly broke the funds down into smaller bank accounts, including a Red Granite Pictures bank account in the US. Both Aziz and Razak deny all charges against them.

The US Justice Department was the first regulatory body to accuse Red Granite of using stolen 1MDB funds to fund Hollywood productions, including the Wolf of Wall Street. If that isn’t the perfect sequel (or prequel, perhaps), than nothing else is.

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5 years ago